Theatre in Review: Black No More (The New Group/Pershing Square Signature Center)

	Brandon Victor Dixon and ensemble. Photo: Monique Carboni

For such a sincere musical, Black No More has a remarkably kooky premise: Dr. Julius Crookman, a Black scientist, invents a machine that turns Black people white, thereby (in his view), eliminating America's race problem. Max Disher, an early adopter, gets the treatment and, renaming himself Matthew Fisher, heads for Atlanta in pursuit of Helen, the white woman with whom he once flirted in a Harlem club. He ends up entangled with Helen's father, Reverend Givens, who runs a Ku Klux Klan knockoff called Nordica. It's a penny-ante operation until Max/Matthew, eager to get in good with the family, becomes its public face, drawing big crowds (and donations) by spewing pernicious nonsense about race relations. He has a bad conscience about this, to be sure, but he can't walk away from his new life. Then Helen gets pregnant, and the prospect of a black child puts him on the spot.

The race-transformation machine plot device sounds like something from a light-minded vintage musical. (Think Finian's Rainbow, in its day a model of progressive satire.) But Black No More is a serious-minded melodrama about the insidious effects of racism, sexism, capitalism, and other assorted social ills; it draws contemporary parallels so broadly that they will be obvious to a child of three. Max, leading the charge against Crookman's technology, tells his Nordica followers, "The white man's best days are to come...if you reject science." Helen, striving to find agency beyond the roles of wife and mother, laments, "I wish they could look beyond/The fact that I was born a blonde/And see me as I am inside/But they say, 'My, your eyes are wide'." (The number is called "Live Your Truth," one of many 2021 locutions inserted into this period tale.) Buni, Matthew's female best friend, determined to make him see the error of his ways, sings, "When it's all said and done/Seems destiny depends upon/A woman once again to save the day." (To underline the point, the number is titled, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight?")

To make sure everyone gets it, near the end Matthew turns to the audience and says, "There are people who've been profound since the beginning of time, and still we can't put all our nonsense behind us. So, I'm gonna keep it real, and I'm gonna keep it real simple: stop fucking hating." Intersectionality is invoked by the specter of an "expert in racial degeneration," who notes that it's time for "a new threat/Just take your pick/Immigrants, homosexuals/Non-Christians, Asians/Any beast of blame/For the plight of we Caucasians." But never fear; the finale features an anthem titled "Victory for Love," in which we are told -- wait for it -- "You'll never walk alone."

You'd never know that this studiously right-thinking entertainment is derived from one of the most scabrous comic novels of its era, George Schuyler's Black No More is a merciless takedown of Americans on both sides of the racial divide, with a rangy cast of grifters, con artists, and false prophets. Max is a full-time hustler, using his position at Nordica to whip up phony controversies, shake down factory owners, and engineer a presidential election. Helen is a bigoted, brainless debutante, on the hunt for a trophy husband. Buni, a man, takes the Crookman treatment and happily becomes Max's partner in chicanery. Agamemnon, in the musical a booster of the Harlem Renaissance, is one of many fake do-gooders who run social agencies that extract money from Black people while doing nothing to improve their lives. (One such character is a hatchet-job portrait of Marcus Garvey.) Other elements include a race-baiting white senator named Rufus Kretin; Samuel Buggerie, a statistician and the author of tomes like The Fluctuation of the Sizes of Left Feet Among the Assyrians During the Ninth Century Before Christ; and Jack Albert, "America's premier black-faced troubadour," delivering his hit song, "Vanishing Mammy." The story climaxes with the torture and lynching of two white men by a crowd of moronic, Bible-rolling white trash.

It's not surprising that book-writer John Ridley and lyricist Tariq Trotter don't adhere to the letter of Schuyler's novel, which has the wisecracking tone of a Warner Brothers pre-Code comedy even when describing the most vicious acts. (The novel ends with America moving toward a mixed-race future, something for Schuyler was, reportedly an advocate. Then again, he was something of an ideological shapeshifter, running with a socialist crowd, then growing sufficiently conservative to write for a John Birch Society-published journal and oppose the Civil Rights Act of 1964.) Some elements, not least Schuyler's brutal physical descriptions of many characters, would probably be unacceptable today. Still, there's little getting around the fact that a great, unruly, disturbing comic masterpiece has been smoothed down into a litany of popular pieties, often expressed in 2021 terms. Despite a starry cast and many classy design elements, the result is more than a little pallid; you know what the shows is going to say before it says it.

Ridley thins out the novel's narrative to focus on Max, his romance with Helen, and his moral qualms, as exacerbated by Buni, who acts as his conscience. Max is a largely passive character, always a problem for the lead in a musical. Brandon Victor Dixon, who plays him (before and after his transformation, with no change in his appearance) is often left standing around, looking pained. There's little evidence of the rabble-rouser who electrifies the Nordica crowd. Instead, he muses, ashamedly, "How did a Black boy from Harlem/End up a proper white Southern gentleman?"

The other cast members are saddled with characters that are little more than mouthpieces for the musical's themes. Helen is a drab, mopey figure, leaving Jennifer Damiano to fade into the background. The same goes for Howard McGillin and Tracey Shayne as Reverend and Mrs. Givens, although Theo Stockman works up some menace as their bigoted, none-too-bright son. Ephraim Sykes is solid as Agamemnon, who is largely confined to the sidelines, and Trotter is unexceptional in his few appearances as Dr. Crookman. If Buni's constant moralizing becomes a bore, Tamika Lawrence's stunning vocals provide some much-needed energy; the same is true of the great Lillias White, criminally underused as a beauty-parlor proprietor whose hair-straightening business dries up when Harlem incurs an epidemic of whiteness.

If the highly variable lyrics tend toward editorializing, the music -- by Trotter, Anthony Tidd, James Poyser, and Daryl Waters -- is often lively and propulsive, especially in Waters' orchestrations. The score is a bit of a stylistic gumbo, which may be inevitable when four composers are involved. Bill T. Jones has contributed some highly sinuous choreography that rarely seems organic to the action; it works best in the early nightclub scenes. Scott Elliott's direction is solidly paced and cleanly delineated.

The production design is big but spare. Derek McLane's set uses the expanse of the Irene Diamond Stage, defining it with an upstage gray brick wall and matching portals and vertical trusses; individual scenes are represented minimally, but effectively, with a few pieces of furniture. (Harlem and Nordica are represented by sets of human-sized letters rolled onstage, an effect rather like what Bunny Christie does in the current revival of Company.) Jeff Croiter's lighting is a procession of gorgeous looks, most of them featuring precise sidelight effects and strong saturated colors. In the early scenes, the costumes by Qween Jean take a leaf from William Ivey Long's Chicago design book; she also comes up with a collection of authentic period styles. Nevin Steinberg's typically solid sound design provides all the resonance and clarity one could wish.

Black No More is certainly a daring attempt at something different, but it has structural issues -- it has at least three endings -- and it suffers from an excess of good intentions. In trying to spin a mordant social statement from its science-fiction premise, and in its insistence on thinking virtuous thoughts, it ends up with being perilously close to a sermon. It may be good for you. But it's not all that much fun. -David Barbour